chrishansenhome

The headline says most of it. I was very nervous about flying for the first time in three years. Security has been rumoured to be a pain at airports, and I was also flying with insulin in cold bags. Plus, I had to leave the house in rush hour, which didn't make me feel any better.

However, Fate smiled on me, it seems. I packed on Monday and Tuesday, and made lists, which I crossed out when I'd completed each item. The only thing I forgot is a non-Masonic bow tie.

I took the Heathrow Express after getting to Paddington on the Underground. I only had to carry my suitcase down one flight of stairs, and my backpack was not too heavy, so I made it without incident. When I dropped my suitcase off at Terminal 5, it was 19 kg, which is four kg under the limit, thus leaving me lots of room for all the things I need to buy here and carry back with me.

The gate that the plane left from was almost the furthest away from the centre of the terminal you can get. I had paid to select a wider seat than normal, the only drawback being that it was almost at the rear of the plane. It was worth it, though. More legroom, only one neighbour (who hardly impinged on my consciousness), and only two screaming babies. Watched "The Iron Lady", which I thought good, although Denis Thatcher appearing all the time as a hallucination to Lady Thatcher was kind of unnerving.

I had asked for the diabetic meal, and it was surprisingly good. Chicken paella, a roll and salad, and (I think) rice pudding. They kept after me to have wine or liquor, and I refused and asked for Diet Coke, which they ran out of by the middle of the flight. Then an hour before landing at Logan, they handed me a sandwich, labelled "Chickpea Paté and Tomato". It was surprisingly ungood. I had to ask for a coffee to choke it down.

Decanting at Logan was very slow. The Indian lady across the aisle kept getting up and swinging her capacious handbag around, clobbering me in the head. Being long-suffering, I didn't make a fuss. Immigration was slow (as I was almost the last to get into the queue), and when I got up to the agent he did ask more questions than usual: how long have you been away (18 years, said I. Oh, you live there! he said.), what do you do (rather than explain everything I just said "Retired"), why are you here ("Visiting relatives").

And then there was the luggage carousel. Apparently they were examining the bags more thoroughly as they dribbed and drabbed onto the carousel. The non-US citizens line was also travelling more slowly, so the carousel was full of unclaimed-as-yet baggage. A woman agent was taking bags off the carousel and piling them up to make room. Sod's Law meant that mine was one of the last bags to come up the ramp. Out the door into the wide US world.

My brother and sister were waiting outside the airport in a parking lot for my call that I was out of Immigration and Customs and ready to be picked up. My mobile phone took forever to connect to the network, but I managed to call and duly got picked up.

My friend Fraf, who is the local-colour columnist for the Marblehead town newspaper, called and suggested that we take a ride around town to look at all the ugly new buildings that are going up. There are a lot of new McMansions on Marblehead Neck, most of which are pretty ugly and just show that, zoning laws or no zoning laws, there is no accounting for taste. I still haven't been downtown to see the scars left by the demolition of the old YMCA (now a parking lot) and the old movie theatre and First National Store (now a building site). Must try to do that this afternoon.

We went out to dinner in the evening with my brother's girlfriend, whom I have never met in person but only spoken to on the phone. She is very nice—a much better match with my brother than his ex-wife ever was. We went to the big Chinese restaurant in Salem, which never ceases to amaze me. You get Chinese tea without asking (you always have to pay for it in the UK), they bring rolls and butter to the table (just bizarre), and the meal is so big that you can never eat the whole thing. I got orange chicken, and the amount was absolutely stupefying. We took about 1/2 of it home and that's lunch, I think.

We went food shopping for Easter. Lots of ham, onions for creamed onions, dip stuff, cream cheese with olives, the whole nine yards. Her adopted son is Korean—quite a hottie, if I do say so, and quite straight. He's a nurse; his girlfriend is Filipina, also a nurse. I believe there is a daughter as well but am slightly unsure. I'll meet them all on Easter.

Jetlag is minimal at the moment, barring being awake at 5 am. I've hooked my netbook up to a full-size monitor and keyboard and mouse, and use LogMeIn to connect with my computer in London. So I've not had to accumulate thousands of emails on the servers while I'm away; I can download them to London from here. I haven't gotten the WiFi password here yet—my brother is not computer-savvy so I'm unsure how to get it. I think that his girlfriend's son might know.

The only downer here is that my brother's dog, Mickey, is 14 years old and infirm. He pads around, eats a bit, barks very little, and has cataracts. I don't know what my brother will do when Mickey gets to the point of being so ill that he has to be put to sleep. Time to go watch BBC World now.

I was looking through my uncle's papers, and found not only my great-grandparents' marriage certificate (I think I'd seen that before), but also a couple of things that made me think:

First was a letter from my great-uncle Hervey to his parents. The thing was, it was in pencil and it was written from prison, where he was doing time for theft. I haven't transcribed it yet, but I think it's worth it.

Second was a letter from my grandfather to his parents, i which he talks about his education, his work (I think it must have been in the late 1920's, after my uncle was born and in the midst of the Great Depression). Very touching.

I don't think there's much more to discover, but as he wanted me to have his books and papers, I'll see what I can do to preserve and use them.

PS: My uncle's phone just rang, and I answered it with a bit of trepidation, as I was dreading having to tell someone else that he'd died. Fortunately, it was a wrong number. Narrow escape!

We were asleep just now when the phone rang. It was my sister calling from Marblehead. She started out, "I'm OK, Uncle Dick's OK, Harold (my brother) had a heart attack." I would have liked the bad news first, I think.

He was working and he felt a tightness in his chest. He ignored it for a while, until he couldn't ignore it any more, so he went home, changed his clothes (can't go to the hospital unless your underwear's clean, can you?), and called 911. They did an angioplasty and put in a stent, and he's now "resting comfortably", as they say.

I just gave him a call at the hospital, and he answered the phone with "Miller Auto Service". When they asked him whether he'd ever been in the hospital, he answered, "Once, when I was born. I wanted to be close to my mother." (he's a Three Stooges fan...) At least he could still crack a joke.

So there you go. I told him "I guess you've joined the club." but I hope he recovers as well as I've seemed to. My sister said, "I suppose I ought to make an appointment at the hospital for an angioplasty now, rather than waiting." I think it would be better if all of us lost more weight and took more exercise.

Oh well, back to bed, and maybe to sleep.

Later note: He seems to be resting comfortably. However, upon reflection, I realised that I had my heart attack aged 53 years 3 months. He had his aged 53 years 2 months. I should tell my sister to book the angioplasty lab at the hospital in August 2011.

On my website I talk a bit about my family background. My grandmother, Alice Fredericka Westman Adams Hansen Phillips (tra la!) was born in Buffalo, Wyoming in September 1888. I would estimate that this picture was taken between 1905 and 1908. In the lower right-hand corner (invisible in the scan) is embossed "The Fuller Studio, Sheridan, Wyo."

Her father was a drunkard and a horse thief. Oddly enough for those times, he was not hanged for it. But when I told my father that he was a horse thief, Dad laughed and said, "Did they hang him high?" I answered: "You really shouldn't joke about it: they named you after him." His name was Orin James Westman and his wife, Mary Dawson, divorced him and married John Adams (no, not that one). She married my grandfather after corresponding with him because their teachers knew each other. She moved to Marblehead, and when my grandfather died in the late 1930's, she married Mahlon Phillips, an engineer with the Boston and Maine whose usual run was Boston to Portland. He died in the early 1960's, and she moved to live with her daughter and son-in-law in Alabama, where she died in 1979, aged 90.

I have been slowly retouching pictures of my parents' wedding. They had a photographer, and got the proofs, but never had enough money at that time to get the pictures printed. So the proofs are all that remains. Last year I did one, and today I set my hand to a second one. I'm not very good, but the picture turned out pretty well, I think. Here it is. My grandfather is in the centre, with my grandmother arranging his bouttoniere and my Mom to the left.

As usual, I'm beat on Christmas evening; having Midnight Mass, then Christmas day Mass, then cooking, always leaves me exhausted. The Queen was suitably tasteful this afternoon, talking of the "annus horribilis" we've just had (no, she didn't use those words) and reminding us of our duty toward those who have suffered in the last year. The Christmas ham was very good (if I do say so myself), and all four of us are suitably stuffed and waiting for squash pie a bit later.

So, Merry Christmas to you all (well, Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends and a very happy day to everyone else), and I hope you've all had a good day.

To those who are feeling down, hugs and much love from London to you all.

Update: The Times of London, today, referred to the Queen's talking about 2005 as an "annus horribilis". So I wasn't the only one who made the connection, I guess.

This is mostly copied from a post of mine in soc.motss, where there is a thread on regrettable desserts made with lime Jell-o. Removing the rest of the quoted thread, this is what I came up with:

When my mother, God rest her soul, was married her mother gifted her with a set of those cookbook pamphlets that you slotted into a binder. I wish I had these (I think my sister in law deep-sixed them along with the cigarette rolling machine and the decades old liquor bottles full of dried-out alcoholic gunk when she cleaned out the house). They were the perfect embodiment of 1950's lard-using artery-clogging obesity-producing stomach churning food. James Lileks's "Gallery of Regrettable Food" draws heavily on this type of "cuisine", and lime-green Jell-o with lots of stuff suspended in it was a favourite of mothers of the generation in which my mother grew up.

My mother was, on the other hand, a dab hand at pies and desserts. She could whip up an apple pie at the drop of a hat, and I assure you we kept hats around the house to drop for them. Her mince pie was absolutely delicious, and her squash pie (we never did pumpkin for some reason) was so custardy and light you'd kill for another piece of it. She did Joe Froggers (Marblehead molasses cookies), and a kind of chocolate cakey thing with cream in the middle the name of which I forget but it might have been "Eskimo pies". She could do a batch of fudge that came out exactly right and delicious without a candy thermometer sullying her kitchen. Most of her cakes were out of boxes, but they tasted really good and not at all boxlike; brownies were a particular favourite. Tollhouse cookies from scratch were so good...

As for main dishes, she excelled at roast chicken: even the organic free-range chicken they sell nowadays hasn't half the flavour of hers. Mother Hansen's Spaghetti and Meatballs was, while not authentically Italian, so much more flavourful and interesting to eat than the goop you buy in stores now. (I figured out how she did it and I now make Mother Hansen's S and M myself.) She cut her own French Fries in something that looked like a torture chamber for a rat and deep fried 'em too. She made clamcakes that melted in your mouth. Stuffed pork chops and stuffed chicken breasts (when you could still get two attached at the breastbone, and not the anemic 1/2 breasts you get in the stores today). Which reminds me: her stuffing, Pepperidge Farm with potato and Bell's Seasoning mixed in, was delightful and filling. Creamed onions (a 50's favourite, but I made some two days ago and HWMBO really loved them) were a staple holiday treat. She baked her own beans in her own beanpot starting in the late 50's, when the bakery no longer sold them by the quart. Stews that were so delectable along with their dumplings.

One of her few culinary faults in this category was trying to make Chinese pepper steak and putting it on Minute Rice. We preferred it when dad went to the Chinese restaurant in Salem. Another food faux-pas was meatloaves--they were always somewhat raw in the centre and burned on the bottom, while being covered in cream-of-mushroom soup. She made wonderful biscuits, but always burned them on the bottom and we never knew why. But we didn't care when she made homemade whipped cream (nothing out of a tub or aerosol can for her) and turned the biscuits into strawberry shortcake. I try to forget her fish, as it was mostly deep fried and greasily soggy, which has sparked my lifelong abhorrence of fish. We never ate lamb (dad didn't like it). Her one attempt at tongue was spoiled by the fact that she neglected to remove the skin (I was too young to remember but it was a family story that others remembered and passed on to us). An attempt at parsnips didn't turn out well, nor baked eggplant.

The entirety of this reminds me not only of the regrettable foods that mothers slaved over hot stoves to make in the 50's, but the lovely basic foods that they and we prepared from scratch and enjoyed then. If we wanted chicken marsala, or roast chicken, or a steak, or hamburgers broiled with a slice of onion in the middle, we had to make them ourselves. Today you get this stuff from stores and heat it up (and we do our share of that too). Yes, I realise that it saves time. But time is something I have a lot of now. I should spend more of it cooking for HWMBO and me, and not heating up packets of glop but cooking real food.

My mother would be 78 in October if she were alive, and thinking about the food she prepared for us and that we sometimes liked or didn't, I'm not only hungry, but nostalgic. I need to do more cooking like that, and less of the heating up packets of Chicken-with-Leek-and-Bacon-Sauce from Tesco.

PS: If you want the recipe for Mother Hansen's Spaghetti and Meatballs, apply within...